All smartphone manufacturers include a series of functionalities limited to their terminals, through their customization layer. If it's about the camera, everyone, absolutely everyone, natively include and activated a beauty filter, a filter that softens facial imperfections such as wrinkles, freckles, pimples ...
Despite the controversy that is generated from time to time by these types of filters, all manufacturers continue to include them activated by default. The only one that has changed its mind is Google, who has announced that all the terminals in the Pixel range will have this function disabled by default.
Google claims that various studies claim that this functionality can have a negative effect on the mental health of users. To avoid this, it has decided to deactivate it natively and urges other manufacturers to follow the same path. In the Google blog where the company announces this change, we can read:
We set out to better understand the effect that selfie filters can have on people's well-being, especially when filters are turned on by default. We conducted multiple studies and spoke to child and mental health experts around the world, and found that when a filter is not known to have been applied by a camera or photo app, photos can negatively impact mental well-being. These default filters can quietly set a standard of beauty that some people compare themselves to.
In addition to recommending that manufacturers disable filters by default, he also urges them to stop using terms like beauty, improvement, embellishment, retouch… Since all these terms imply that the photo needs an improvement. The only term that Google recommends using is Facial retouch.
Google will update the Google Camera application shortly to remove the default filter that includes and will add the Face Retouch option. When the user uses this option, a message will be displayed informing the user that this is exactly what they are doing.